Wayne Rooney's four-goal performance helped ensure Manchester United's focus returned to on-field affairs as the defending Premier League champions moved to the top of the table for the first time in more than three months with a 4-0 victory over Hull.
Manager Sir Alex Ferguson has spoken of the need to give Rooney a rest but the England forward's form and importance to his team make such a move unlikely any time soon.
It took Rooney just seven minutes against strugging Hull to illustrate the point perfectly to his manager and also to ease the pressure and growing dissatisfaction around Old Trafford in the wake of recent developments off the field surrounding American owners the Glazer family.
The announcement this week that United's debts stand at 716 million pounds did not impress many of the club's supporters, even though a successful 500 million bond issue will allow the Glazers to re-structure that debt.
Ferguson felt moved, in his pre-match programme notes, to call upon supporters to show unity behind their club and cease their anti-Glazer agitating.
However, as long as Rooney remains fit and in the sort of goal-scoring form he showed against Hull, United's future does not look quite so precarious.
United's first goal came after Park Ji-Sung played the ball into the path of Paul Scholes, who drilled in a vicious shot which Hull goal keeper Boaz Myhill could only parry.
Rooney responded more quickly than anyone else on the field, gathering the loose ball and steadying himself before burying his 17th goal of the season into the gaping goal.
Goal number 18 came in the 82nd minute after Myhill had made a poor job of dealing with a long-range Nani free-kick. Rooney himself kept the loose ball in play and Gibson found the forward, who finished clinically from 15 yards.
The hat-trick was just three minutes away as the irrepressible forward ran in to meet Nani's hanging cross and head into the goal from six yards.
For good measure, the 20th goal of Rooney's increasingly remarkable season followed in injury-time as he collected Dimitar Berbatov's neat flick, saw three defenders back off, and converted his shot from 12 yards.